MINI REVIEW article
Front. Hum. Dyn.
Sec. Digital Impacts
This article is part of the Research TopicEthical Issues, Challenges and Solutions in Metaverse and Web3View all articles
AI Smart Glasses, Ambient Computing, and the Public Sphere: A Mini Review of Media Governance Challenges
Provisionally accepted
Samira Setoutah1
Elsir Ali Saad Mohamed2*
Khalid Ibrahim Abdelaziz Ishag1
Widad Haroon Ahamed Mohamed3
Khalid Osman Mohamed1- 1University of Al Dhaid, United Arab Emirates, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
- 2Umm Al Quwain University, Umm Al Quwain, United Arab Emirates
- 3Al Qasimia University, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
AI-powered smart glasses are increasingly positioned as central interfaces within the paradigm of ambient computing, signaling a transition from smartphone-centric interaction toward continuous, context-aware mediation embedded in everyday environments. Drawing on peer-reviewed research published between 2022 and 2025, alongside selected regulatory, market, and technical sources, this article examines how AI smart glasses reconfigure visibility, datafication, and communicative power in public and semi-public spaces. Grounded in critical media theory—including remediation, the attention economy, surveillance capitalism, data colonialism, and critical algorithm studies—the review conceptualizes smart glasses as ambient media infrastructures rather than neutral consumer devices. The analysis demonstrates that these technologies intensify long-standing media governance challenges by relocating mediation from screens to first-person perceptual layers, raising urgent questions about privacy, consent, algorithmic bias, data sovereignty, and democratic participation. By situating AI smart glasses within debates on platform power and the public sphere, the article argues for proactive, participatory, and infrastructure-level governance frameworks capable of addressing the societal implications of ambient AI-mediated perception.
Keywords: Algorithmic bias, Ambient computing, Media governance, Public sphere, Smart glasses, Surveillance capitalism
Received: 05 Sep 2025; Accepted: 10 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Setoutah, Mohamed, Ishag, Mohamed and Mohamed. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Elsir Ali Saad Mohamed
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.